Friends Association for Higher Education

The BlackQuaker Project is thrilled to announce the recent release of the new, timely Pendle Hill audiobook narrated and written by Harold D. Weaver, Jr.: Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives. You may order it on Audible.

Professor Weaver brings to life his seminal 2020 Pendle Hill pamphlet (now in its second edition after the initial printing of 2,000 copies) with the warmth, magnetism, and clarity of a public intellectual whose lectures for decades have enriched universities, film festivals and fora, and international conferences in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. In this new audiobook of his BQP manifesto for 21st century-Quakerism, Friend Weaver offers listeners concrete steps to meet the material and spiritual demands of these dire times. The following actions are among those recommended for Quakers and others seeking true peace, justice, and equity:

1. Contributing to the ongoing international debate on reparations by adopting a Quaker model of Retrospective Justice to address past and recent injustices, such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade, chattel slavery in the Americas, settler colonialism and other forms of European oppression in Africa, and Jim Crow and follow-up repression of African Americans in the USA. Drawing from the groundbreaking 2006 Brown University report, Slavery and Justice, we define Retrospective Justice as “an attempt to administer justice years after the commission of a severe injustice or series of injustices against persons, communities, or racial and ethnic groups.” To achieve this objective of justice, we advise Friends to take the following chronological steps: (1) acknowledge an offense, but do not apologize; (2) commit to truth-telling through in-depth research to uncover the depths and range of the injustice committed; and (3) make amends in the present via programs of political, economic, psychological, cultural, and spiritual rehabilitation and healing, including various forms of material and non-material reparations.
2. Confronting Structural Violence with anti-violence. This particular type of violence is defined by British Friend Adam Curle as “the political and economic inequalities which are built into the social structure.” Palestinian Quaker scholar and leader Sister Jean Zaru expanded on Professor Curle’s definition of structural violence in her 2008 book, Occupied with Non-Violence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks, with five universal forms of structural violence, which we apply to the African American reality in the USA (with a specific example for each): (1) economic structural violence (poverty), (2) political structural violence (voter disenfranchisement, militarization of law enforcement ), (3) cultural structural violence (omission and distortion of African American history), (4) religious structural violence (islamophobia), and (5) environmental structural violence (lead poisoning in Flint, MI, and the “cancer corridor” from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, LA). Our BlackQuaker Project audiobook and pamphlet have expanded her list, with the addition of two new major categories: health structural violence (prescription overpricing) and educational structural violence (school-to-prison pipeline). Challenging these forms of systemic violence will require a mobilization of local and national energy, organization, mutual aid, and massive funding. The overwhelming scope of this undertaking requires us to be radically anti-violent, not merely non-violent in challenging traditional direct violence.
   Note: In citing Palestinian Friend Zaru, we wish to remind readers of the current genocide against her people.
3. Placing Justice, too often neglected, front-and-center in our Quaker testimonies. We again cite Friend Adam Curle, founder of Peace Studies in the UK, who stated: “Justice has a twofold meaning: one spiritual–righteousness, the observance of the divine law; the other temporal– fairness, righteous dealing, integrity….[Our] vision of justice is the result of seeking to live in virtue of nonviolence, compassion, redemption, and love.” Can we have peace without justice? Can we have equality without justice? We think not.
4. Replacing SPICES as an acronym for Quakerism–initially created for non-Quakers–with “JaM with SPICES:” Justice and Mercy with Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship. This is recommended only as an initial step towards moving beyond SPICES entirely as, in the long run, can any acronym convey the dynamic, complex, international phenomenon that Quakerism is today? Our ministry is doubtful. What do you think?

About the Author

Now in his 92nd year, Friend Hal Weaver was first exposed to Quakerism as a 16-year-old student at the Westtown School, followed by 4 years at Haverford College. Drafted into the US Army in 1957, Hal later made the difficult decision to become a conscientious objector when he was assigned to train others to kill. Weaver acknowledges the impact that Dr. King’s non-violent human-rights sturggle had on his decision. In recent decades, Friend Weaver has assumed governance roles in various Quaker organizations: the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker United Nations Office, Cambridge Friends School, Friends General Conference, and Haverford College, his alma mater. From this, he learned where Quakerism stood in the modern world and where it needed improvement, most acutely in the involvement of Quakers of Color.

Hal’s work continues through his BlackQuaker Project ministry, the fruits of which include the groundbreaking anthology, Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights (print 2011, audiobook 2025), edited with Paul Kriese and Stephen W. Angell, and his 2021 Friends Journal Article, “A Proposed Plan for Retrospective Justice (2021),” developed from his 2020 Pendle Hill pamphlet. In his latest written book, Race, Decolonization, and the Cold War: African Student Elites In Moscow, 1955-1964 (2025), Professor Weaver applies his unique perspective as a Quaker scholar-activist of African descent to his challenge of traditional Cold War stereotypes about African students in Moscow in the 1960’s, now available through Africa World Press. His 2026 Pendle Hill audiobook, Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives, is available to order here.

How do you feel about Retrospective Justice, structural violence and anti-violence, the importance of the Justice testimony, and the need to replace SPICES? We welcome your thoughts and feelings on these important BQP recommendations: theblackquakerproject@gmail.com .

Here is a link to a PDF of this newsletter:

Peace and Blessings,
The BlackQuaker Project
Wellesley Friends Meeting
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)
4 February 2026